On The E-c Subtitle Translation Of Desperate Housewives From The Perspective Of Skopostheorie

Films and TV series are effective means of mass media to transfer culturalinformation. With the growing number of people studying English, more and morepeople begin to show great interest in foreign movies and TV shows to learn English.However, the quality of subtitle translation is far from being satisfactory, which, to acertain extent, has a negative effect in the target-language audience’s enjoyment andappreciation of the films and TV series, thus hindering the healthy development ofsubtitle translation and cultural exchanges. With the rising demand for TV series,subtitle translation is attracting more and more attention. Therefore, the improvementof subtitle translation is very important in helping the target-language audienceunderstand the plot of the films and TV series and in promoting the development ofsubtitle translation.This thesis, by adopting skopostheorie, conducts a research on translationstrategies of the subtitles of the online American comic TV series DesperateHousewives. It adopts the “three rules” of skopostheorie as the standard of translationevaluation. It points out that the purpose of subtitle translation is to make the audienceunderstand the plot and the story of the TV series without much effort. In order torealize the purpose of subtitle translation, the author proposed four translationstrategies by analyzing some authentic translation examples. They are reduction,explicitation, domestication and foreignization.The result of the study shows that reduction and domestication are the mostfrequently used translation strategies because of the restriction of time and space ofsubtitle translation. Foreignization is the least used translation strategy because of thehuge differences between China and the West. When it comes to cultural-relatedwords or expression, explicitation is the best choice.